In Latin America, as in the rest of the world, governments have put their hands on their wallets to face the multidimensional crisis brought by the pandemic. Although spending has been unprecedented, the results show that it is not enough for a region that was already the most unequal in the world, and that will regress an estimated 15 years in poverty reduction.
The crisis has not only forced us to rethink daily hygiene and health systems, but also development models and how we conceive community life when we realize that civilization is more fragile than we thought. At the base of all these questions are a series of rules from which emanate the inequalities that Latin Americans face in their daily lives: taxes and how these are regulated in the States.
The payment of taxes to the State should work in such a way that all citizens, and especially those who have more, contribute to building a system of social protection so that no one is left without access to rights such as life, health, education, among others. The problem comes when those who have more evade the responsibility they have with the State, and worse, the State gives them exemptions and benefits so that they do not have to comply with it.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
